US Election: Making Sense Of A Divided Nation's Perilous Choice

Electing Donald Trump — a maverick and a disruptor of democratic order — once could be called a fluke, an aberration, or a terrible mistake. But electing the same person again four years later is no mistake; it is a huge disaster. What Trump’s return to presidency reveals about America and its democracy is what the United States really is today, as opposed to what it should have been and that so many hoped it could be as the world’s oldest democracy and an economic powerhouse. Come to think of it, Trump’s comeback was a worst-case scenario: that a convicted felon, a chronic “liar” who tried to overturn the last election, who calls America “a garbage can of the world” and who threatens revenge against his political rivals could win. And yet, Trump won the election.

His comeback win is hard to believe because his idea of America is so different from the idea of America entrenched in its Constitution and democratic norms. His re-election has stunned the political world because the world was invested in the outcome of the consequential election — not just why the US is the biggest political, economic, and military power but also since a victory for Trump was seen as potentially disruptive and altering international relations. Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to recast America and remake the international order. The election was predicted to be among closest ever contests, but did not turn out to be a cliffhanger as expected. The outcome, therefore, can be read as the US electorate’s endorsement of his idea of America that rejects consensus and compliance with the law and democratic traditions.

Trump’s radical ideology, which he has put forward and cultivated as the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement since his victory in November 2016, is no different from the dogmatic ideas of surging far-right forces across the developed western world. Populists and nationalists, including once-fringe parties, have swept Europe as mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties have bled support. Just like in much of Europe, American voters have voted for Trump for the same narrative: economic worries and drummed-up fear of the immigrants. If his victory in 2016 was a stunning surprise and a huge shock to America and rest of the world, his re-election has brought back the same fears that characterised his first presidency — advent of isolationism, sweeping tariffs, score-settling and an era of uncertainty.

If Trump’s comeback victory can be seen as the affirmation of his grievances by more than half the American electorate, it exemplifies a signal for a different kind of country that Trump envisages the USA to be in future. The controversy-evoking president-elect’s durability over a decade in politics, and his ability to defy all norms of decency and ethics, is a pointer to the fact that America has lurched away from mainstream polity to right-wing politics of anger, rage, and crudity. How voters tolerated his aberrant behaviour came down to one remarkable story of his grievances melding with those of the MAGA movement, the Republican Party, and more than half the country.

The fact that he overcame seemingly fatal vulnerabilities — four criminal indictments, two impeachments, three expensive law suits, 34 felony counts and endless reckless utterances in his campaign speeches — and transformed some of them into distinct advantages means that America has almost become a mirror image of Europe where right-wing leaders have gained significant political ground. The images of him bleeding after a failed assassination attempt became the symbol of what his supporters saw as a campaign of destiny. “God spared my life for a reason,” Trump said at his victory speech, adding, “we are going to fulfil that mission.” What he meant is that there is an element of divinity associated with him to lead America in a direction that is difficult to foresee for now.

Trump’s win is a result of his successfully harnessing the anger and frustration that millions of Americans felt about some of the very institutions and systems that he will soon control as the country’s 47th president. But more than just societal forces, his victory was owed in part to a strategic and stable campaign, though the candidate himself was quite erratic. For any other politician, according to The New York Times, Trump’s conviction related to hush-money payments to a porn star would have been the worst day of his candidacy. But in Trump’s case, it worked like financial rocket fuel: small donors poured $50 million into his coffers in 24 hours. A day later, another $50 million came from the reclusive billionaire Timothy Mellon.

How Trump won is also the story of how Kamala Harris lost. She was hobbled by President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and continued to struggle to break from him in the eyes of voters yearning for a change in direction. She had only little more than three months to reintroduce herself to the country and she vacillated until the end to fight Trump head-on. She got just one debate with Trump to make her case. He never accepted a rematch and that meant no more national moments for her. Not every decision Trump made was great because he won, and not every decision Kamala Harris made was poor because she lost. But in a race and in a nation so narrowly divided, as political analysts have said, Trump and his team made just enough of the right moves.

With his convincing win, comfortable majority in the Senate and possible control of the House of Representatives, America’s decisive far-right lurch has set the country on a precarious course that no one can fully comprehend. What cannot be ignored is the fact that millions of voters voted for Trump, convinced that he was more likely to change and fix what they regarded as America’s urgent problems — high prices, economic policies, constant flow of migrants and a porous southern border. Along with legal immunity, the unfettered and absolute power Trump will enjoy now will likely result in an assault on the fundamental pillars of America’s democracy, including basic civil rights.

There is little illusion about how Trump intends to govern, given his naked motivation for the pursuit of power and the preservation of the cult of personality he has built around himself. He has shown in his first term and in the years after he left office that he has no respect for law and the values, norms and traditions of democracy. The rest of the world, too, has no illusions about the leader who will represent the US on the world stage.

The writer is a senior independent Mumbai-based journalist. He tweets at @ali_chougule